Helsing's Fire

from , originally released 31st December, 1969

When the implacable Professor Helsing and his assistant Raffton travel to The Shadow Blight, they'll need every weapon at their disposal to defeat Dracula's vampire horde. In this captivating, dark Gothic puzzle-adventure, use Dr. Helsing's powerful torch and tonics to save the world from the demoni...

Dracula has had many enemies over the years, mostly inanimate objects such as garlic and wooden stakes. However, only one human foe has really left an impression on the Ã¼ber-vampire: Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. In this game you fight your way through Dracula’s realm, taking out his minions and underbosses along the way with the power of light and color-coded tonics.

The gameplay mechanic in Helsing’s Fire is completely original and masterful. You are given a top-down view of a room, full of walls and various enemies. Using the walls as barriers, you must move the torch around so the light emitting around it 360 degrees only shines on specific enemies.

Once you’ve got the light adjusted where you like, you can drop one of three colored tonics, sending out a stream of color and affecting any enemies it touches. If the enemy is of the same color, it will destroy it, while enemies of another color will gain extra protection and ultimately force you to restart the level.

As you continue through the game, new types of enemies are introduced. For example, there are archers and ogres, who will try to hit your torch with projectiles once you hit them. If they succeed, you lose a torch, and you have three tries before you need to restart the puzzle.

There are also ghosts that turn invisible when you shine light on them, meaning you need to remember their position, bats that move and possibly change color each time you hit them, and werewolves that turn into damsels in distress who cannot be hit if you are to complete the level.

No Kumbaya around this campfire.

Most enemies also have shields, which must be destroyed with the right colors before you can destroy the enemy. This means you’ll need to plan out the order in which you deploy tonics, so you don’t run out of a certain color before all enemies are eradicated.

There are three boss battles in the game, the last of which is Dracula. Our favorite parts of these fights are their darkness attack, which is basically a version of your torchlight that causes you harm. In order to avoid it, you need to hide behind a wall.

Although it may sound complicated, this novel mechanic becomes easy once you start playing the game. If you ever have trouble on a level, you can change between three difficulty levels. The best part about the difficulty setting, however, is that each of the three options offers a unique puzzle based on the same environment. This means that you can play the game three times and solve each puzzle in a different way. 90 levels in one playthrough ends up becoming 270 levels on all three difficulties. Considering it takes about two hours to complete the game in normal mode, that’s a lot of darkness to be conquered.

Right back atcha, Raffton.

Even after you’ve beaten the game, there is the endless mode to pursue. Here you can choose from three maps and play a continuous stream of timed puzzles. Once you run out of time or fail a puzzle, the game ends and you are scored based on how many enemies you killed. There are leaderboards provided by Chillingo’s Crystal network to increase this mode’s replay value.

Lastly, the visual touches in Helsing’s Fire make the experience as polished as it gets. The dark environment, character reactions, comic-esque onomatopoeia, and enemy animation that ensues when they are in the light make the game all the more enjoyable to play. Plus, you’ll occasionally witness some quick and witty dialogue between Helsing, his partner Raffton, and various monsters.

The best part of all is that Helsing’s Fire only costs $.99. At that price, you’ll get hours upon hours of enjoyment that’s hard to find in apps ten times the price. Don’t hesitate to buy this game.

July has been an outstanding month for games, with heavy hitters like Gameloft’s Hero of Sparta 2 and Let’s Golf! 2, plus surprise hits like Chopper 2 and Plunderland. But our top spot goes to one of the brightest games on the App Store: Helsing’s Fire.

In Helsing’s Fire, a 99-cent puzzle game from Ratloop and Clickgamer, you play as the legendary Professor Van Helsing from Bran Stoker’s Dracula. Along with his trusted companion Ruffton, Helsing has created a series of potions which, when combined with the awesome light of righteousness, will destroy Dracula’s minions.

The trick is finding the right position on the screen to place your torches. You must bathe the monsters in light, but only deploy potions that match their color. You must also avoid destroying humans, and keep your torch moving to dodge the darkness the creatures throw at you.

Helsing’s Fire is a beautiful and creative example of the iPhone’s gaming potential. It contains a simple concept, but adds layers of complexity from level to level. Wrapping it all up is an interesting story, likable characters, stylish graphics, and great music.

Our runner-up is Xenome Episode 1 from Nine Pound Studios. Xenome is a massive open-world RPG that plays like an offline World of Warcraft. You play as The Scientist, who is awakened in a wasteland future and must discover why he was frozen in the past is a wanted man in the future. If you like exploration, character customization, and are addicted to the “ding” of leveling up, you need to try Xenome.

Congratulations to Ratloop and Nine Pound Studios for making such incredible games. These two winners and all of the other games we mentioned here are worth buying, so go get ‘em!

Connect with us

Hot Videosfrom the past week

With recent high-quality releases like Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire and Gunbrick, developer Nitrome has been kicking butt lately. The studio is gearing up for one more iOS release: Silly Sausage in Meat Land, a puzzle / action game featuring a wiener dog whose body goes on for miles.

Do you like auto-running platformers? Do you like Ancient Egyptian art? If so, you’ll want to check out this cool-looking game. It kind of looks like the recent PlayStation 4 game Apotheon, but Egyptian rather than Greek, and auto-running rather than directly controlled. You can download it here for $1.99.

Silly Sausage in Meat Land is the latest game from Nitrome. This awesomely-named action game apparently plays like a mix between Retry and the old Nokia game Snake. Take a look at AppSpy’s video footage of the game, and keep an eye out for Silly Sausage’s release this week.

AppSpy’s review of Kiloo’s hack-and-slash adventure pegs it as a more casual take on the Infinity Blade franchise. There’s fewer things to collect, less ways to gear up, and you’ll ultimately hit the inevitable grind-or-pay wall that accompanies many free-to-play titles, but you’ll have a good time for an hour or so.